DHAKA: Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, chairperson and president of Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Awami League respectively, separately opposed the Election Commission’s proposed plan to prepare voters rolls without paying door-to-door visit to the citizens.

This is for the first time in more than 15 years that Hasina and Khaleda have made similar public observations on a subject.

The commission on Monday announced that it would prepare a ‘fresh electoral roll with photographs of the voters and that the voters have to registrar their names in the nearby camps to be set up by the commission for a particular period.

“The proposed system of registering voters would not cover all the people eligible for casting votes,” Nazrul Islam Khan, BNP’s official spokesman, quoted Khaleda Zia after visiting her in the afternoon. “The commission should make sure that the voters list is prepared by way of door-to-door visit to the people,” Khaleda was quoted to have said.

Hasina, in a separate reaction to the EC plan, told reporters the same afternoon that the “preparing voters roll without door-to-door visit is illegal”. “Besides, the commission is supposed to update the voters roll, not to prepare a new list.”

In this regard, Hasina reminded the commission of a High Court order that asked the commission to prepare the roll by door-to-door visit.